Archive for the 'Databases' Category

Hello everyone! I would like to introduce myself and give a bit of background of my involvement with this project.

I am a Library Assistant IV at Iowa State University Library. I have been working in the Subject Departments for over twelve years now. I just completed my MSIT in System Design and Programming from Capella University in Minneapolis, MN.

During my time as a library assistant in Reference and Instruction, I have learned a lot about statistics and keeping them in line. Back in 2001, the department decided that there had to be a better way to keep track of statistics, and for the sake of figuring out which journal titles were not being used, we should find a good way to track usage. We formed a group that went about the task of contacting vendors for statistical usage of their journals and databases. My task in this venture was to assemble the statistics into a usable form for everyone to read.

Starting with Excel tables, I compiled all the various username/password combination into a working file which became quite burdensome as the number of titles and vendors grew. In March of 2002 when Project COUNTER began, we found this to be the perfect time to organize statistics into a project database. The decision was made to locally build an Access database to house the information for faculty to gather. Forms and reports were added to this simple database to find information more easily. Our collections department and faculty still use this today. While we did not see the need to actively gather monthly statistics on databases, journal statistics were constantly being gathered and reported.

Fast forward to 2008 and the advent of budget cuts. It was deemed necessary by our administration to perform a major overhaul of our subscriptions and cut where we could. I was asked to provide statistics for databases in general. While I had a copy of ERMes and played with it once in a while, I had little idea how powerful a tool it would be for this project.

With the wealth of knowledge I have gained over the years building Access databases alongside this excellent open source application, I spent some time updating the ERMes for use with Access 2007 for our local faculty. Coupling our tables with this application made it a lot easier to “see what we might be missing” and use the tool to provide faculty and administration with accurate, up-to-date information about databases and journals by library users. Once I got this “new” version of ERMes to work, I sent a copy to William Doering for review and comment. It is a distinct honor to be considered part of the team as a result of that email attachment!

Over the next few months, I would like to share how things are going here while using ERMes. I still do a lot of local tweaking of the system, but always look forward to sharing with the community of folks who use ERMes. So you may see information on how we made subtle changes locally to fit what we are doing locally.